15 books that will change the way you tattoo (for the better)

owlbooksThere are a lot of great books on art out there, and I’m bound to miss a lot in my list. These are just books I have found incredibly helpful in my work, and which I refer to often.

These are not books of reference images (although I did come up in the time before google images took over, and every shop had its own reference library on site…I still can’t part with all those books!)

These are, instead, books about art in general, about art techniques, or about being an artist that I think apply very well to tattooing. If you have favorites that I do not list, please add a comment and link me to them! I read voraciously and love to find new sources of knowledge.

At least a few of these are free on kindle/ebooks, most are cheap, one or two are pricey, all are available and not rare.

 

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.
To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.
~J. M. Whistler

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Signing and packing the Horrors!

Spent the day and night signing and packing and prepping every copy of the Horrors that’s been ordered so far.

I am covered in papercuts, I have emptied several large gel pens, and ran out of labels. I’ve got about fifty signed copies left after packing these all up. You can order them here: http://resonanteye.net/2014/08/22/the-horrors-orders/

I have to go soak my wrist now.

GO BUY ONE AND SHARE THE LINK AND MAKE ME GET MORE PAPERCUTS FROM THESE EVIL ENVELOPES PLEASE

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right before the envelopes sliced me up

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tons of paper products, and books

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I’ve been defeated

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ready to go

Bus to CA, poetry from my book “Tar and Gravel”

29157_397937423370_2677846_nfrom tar and gravel

bus to CA

There’s something beautiful and comforting about grey vomit stains barely scrubbed from velveteen seat backs and

something about the dense air and useless frustrated wanderlust of the greyhound station and the greyhound itself, this universe of breakdowns

in Pierre North Dakota and Weed, CA that makes me calm. Patience. It makes my mind shut tight and arrange itself compulsively. checking

repeatedly for wallet, keys, ticket, the automatic functions of the reptile brain fully involved;

Making sure nothing is lost, nobody touches me, children don’t climb and I

in the meantime have killed the upper brain.

 

Feet automatically avoiding the sprawl of wild loud children with sticky fingers and dirty pink too-tight shirts where they sit on the floor at the entrance

to the terminal; thirteen slightly torn and stretched garbage bags full of towels, clothes, toys, no books but I can see the handle of

a cast-iron fry pan

clearly outlined in the plastic, spilling around the children is the detritus of people who don’t

 

realize that frying pans are available at thrift stores in duluth as well as southern california.

Bus to CA, poetry from my book "Tar and Gravel"

29157_397937423370_2677846_nfrom tar and gravel

bus to CA

There’s something beautiful and comforting about grey vomit stains barely scrubbed from velveteen seat backs and

something about the dense air and useless frustrated wanderlust of the greyhound station and the greyhound itself, this universe of breakdowns

in Pierre North Dakota and Weed, CA that makes me calm. Patience. It makes my mind shut tight and arrange itself compulsively. checking

repeatedly for wallet, keys, ticket, the automatic functions of the reptile brain fully involved;

Making sure nothing is lost, nobody touches me, children don’t climb and I

in the meantime have killed the upper brain.

 

Feet automatically avoiding the sprawl of wild loud children with sticky fingers and dirty pink too-tight shirts where they sit on the floor at the entrance

to the terminal; thirteen slightly torn and stretched garbage bags full of towels, clothes, toys, no books but I can see the handle of

a cast-iron fry pan

clearly outlined in the plastic, spilling around the children is the detritus of people who don’t

 

realize that frying pans are available at thrift stores in duluth as well as southern california.

three poems.

I’ve got a book coming out this week. The chapbooks are already sold out (I’m keeping a few for later) but it’ll be on kindle as well (very cheaply, because it’s poetry, and who needs poetry.) There’s about a hundred poems in it and the chapbook/for real version has illustrations (but the kindle does not). Several other of my poems are here online, if you like that kind of thing.

 

Here are three poems from that book.

shovels in the sun

outside the little taco stand at 13th street and juniper I met

this bum, this grifter

lying on his side by the beer vomit, he was fooling around with the drawstring on his

grey, thin sweatpants

I sat there waiting. They didn’t have a waiting area, no tables inside. no Loitering.

“I went to the sun.” he told me. “there is a lake there, but it ain’t a regular lake. it’s fire, all fire.”

I smoked. He kept on at me, “Once, I went there. You can’t stay long. It’s hot you know. all the fire. all fire…”

His face creased. His hands started rolling imaginary coils of paper, clacking dirty nails together.

My taco order came up. So I got the bag and sat back down. I had nowhere to be.

“if you get to go to the sun, watch out. they’ll try to trick you. I had to escape, they’re assholes there.

I want to warn you, but they’re listening, right now.”

He pointed at the sky.

“well, what can they do from there?” I had to know. “shoot fire at us?”

“they’ll come and get me, take me back there. I said too much already. shit.”

He stopped. His hands sat now still on the concrete next to the vomit and some bird shit.

“have a taco.” I handed him one.

he nodded but didn’t look at me again.

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the bechdel test.

The Bechdel test is simple. Your book, film, or other work passes if it contains two named female characters, who speak to each, about something other than a man (or men).

I actually think about this while reading or watching a movie. Some movies that have been hailed as feminist masterpieces (by morons *cough*) don’t pass this test. And some movies I love but which are seen as just awful to women- DO pass.

The corollary I’d give, is that if your work doesn’t pass the Bechdick test as well, you are off the hook. This second test is simple- if your film, book, or other work contains two men, with names, who speak to each other about something other than women, it has passed the test.

Some works contain only one character, two male characters, or a mixed pair. These works are officially off the hook, not liable to the test. Since they wouldn’t pass the Bechdick test, you can’t apply Bechdel to them either.

However, a book that passes one MUST pass the other as well, or it’s simply not realistic. Even fantasy works should maintain enough realism in the characters to make me believe they are real, to flesh them out. If a work doesn’t pass the Bechdel test, I find my suspension of disbelief waning, and my interest in the (male) characters almost lost- since some characters are not realistic, none can be.

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